KDs are designed/developed/inspired/mused/auto-suggested/indigested to make folks think; an especially uncommon experience among Democrats, Republicans, and jingoistic mainline denominationalists who continue to discourage dissent with their ever-threatening thought police.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Lies

Lies

Dr. James I. McCord, President of Princeton Theological
Seminary from 1959–1983 and President of the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches, went home to Jesus in 1990.

Our Lord shared many blessings of knowledge
and wisdom through him; and I will never forget what he said about ministry,
stewardship, and lying.

During the 1976 General Assembly of United
Presbyterians in Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. McCord challenged five young
seminarians on the fifth floor of the Hilton Hotel: “Do something for Christ’s
sake!I don’t care if you succeed or
fail.Just do something for Christ’s
sake!”

He often recalled the woman who complained to
him after a sermon: “All you ever talk about when you preach is money.All I ever hear from you is, ‘Give, give,
give.’He responded, “Have you ever
heard of a better definition of Christianity than give, give, give?”

He told us, “Never lie!You don’t have to reveal everything that you
know or think.But never lie.You can tell people that it’s none of their
business or that you’re not comfortable talking about it now or that you may
talk about it at a later date or that you may never talk about it.But never lie!”

Actually, those cherished memories are all
about telling the truth.

Truly, truly, truly, we love God by loving
like Jesus according to the book or doing something for Christ’s sake and
we give in gratitude for what/who He gave (see John 3:16-17) and Jesus said the
father/source/starter of all lies is satanos: “He was a murderer from the
beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in
him.When he lies, he speaks out of his
own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (see John 8:39ff).

So now you know the inspiration and kinship
of liars.

People who love Jesus by the book are
dedicated to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Back on February 3, 1980 in Woodstown, New
Jersey, my buddy Paul Watermulder told Cub Scouts, “Lying is out.Little lies, half-truths, and pretend stories
are out.They will not make you happy,
because God does not like them.No
matter how much it hurts, God likes the truth best.”

I think of the mother who asked Dwight L.
Moody how she could help her children to stop fibbing.Moody answered, “Start calling them lies.”

John Calvin linked lying with the 9th
commandment (“You shall not bear false witness!”) and said breaking it was
“evilspeaking.”

He wrote, “To sum up: let us not malign
anyone with slanders or false charges, nor harm his substance by falsehood, in
short, injure him by unbridled evilspeaking…hateful accusations arising from
evil intent and wanton desire to defame.”